you'll always be in my heart
by lalaclairi
Summary: as the days grow longer. she likes to think she's a rebel, but really she's a goody-two-shoes compared to him. - sam-centric.


She meets him at one of Wendy's stupid parties.

Carly and Freddie had no idea she was there - they had all 'agreed' that getting drunk and making out with complete strangers were not _their _idea of fun. But she had always been the screwed up one, the out-of-control, crazy, wild one. (She's been arrested about four times. Or maybe it's three. She doesn't really care much.)

He has a buzz-cut and a mustache and he dresses like a hobo, he's too skinny and his smirk is too dangerous, but it's the total opposite of all her friends and he's kind of like her, a rebel (she thinks she's a rebel anyway-but deep down she knows there's other teenagers out there, like him, who do way worse stuff than she does. There addicted to drugs, they smoke. She parties, she drinks a little, and she gets arrested sometimes but she's not that bad. At least she's in school. Barely.) and he has scars, and each scar has a story.

It's almost like a second life.

Carly, Freddie, Spencer, Gibby-none of them have any idea about Eric (a surprisingly dorky name, she says with a smirk) or the parties or when she tells them she's at home, most of the time she's actually on the back of Eric's motorcycle, her long blond hair flying in the wind.

It's almost like a movie, the way it happens. The way the end.

She gets her first tattoo a week after she meets him- it's his name, of course. He gets a tattoo of her name on his neck. It's his tenth one, he tells her.

She traces each and every tattoo with her finger, wondering why he got them. What they mean. If it hurt. (She hears Freddie in the back of her head, going on about some crap that too many tattoos can damage your health or you can get some disease with too many or how the ink can get in your blood. Whatever.

Eric says he's invincible and she wants to believe him so nothing can ever be wrong with him. Nothing.)

One day Carly asks why she hasn't had a boyfriend in so long. She starts jabbering about some cute blond surfer boy type in her Math class, he just moved from California, and he plays basketball, he has a scholarship to some college, but she knows good boys are for good, cute, delicate girls like Carly. Bad boys, boys who have scars and tattoos and smoke, like Eric, are for girls like her - reckless. Mean. Tough. (The girls who are always second best.)

Eric lives with his oldest sister. She's twenty-eight. He tells her he's scared she might kick him out now that she's married to some uptight guy who wears fancy suits and has an attractive secretary who talks in a low, sexy voice. She tells him he can always live with her- she knows her Mom wouldn't care, all she'd say is "I'm not paying for that one".

He kind of laughs, but it's to bitter to be a laugh, she thinks.

Her grades slowly get worse.

Of course, no one cares or notices. What could they possibly expect from Sam Puckett?

Maybe she'll drop out like Eric. School was always a waste of time, anyway.

She misses lots of iCarly rehearsals. One week, she doesn't even come to one, and Freddie glares at her and Carly's mad for a while, but then she's hyper and has this weird smirk on her face, the smirk she always has when she knows a secret.

After the show, she tells Freddie to go downstairs and get the three of them snacks, and as soon as he leaves Carly starts screaming. She throws her arms around her neck, and says "I'm so happy for you" and maybe the world is ending or something.

Carly says she knows you have a boyfriend, because you were like with Jonah and Pete, missing important iCarly stuff, and she's happy but you can't forget your priorities.

She silences her, makes up some excuse about Melanie trying to come home again-

And never misses any rehearsals again.

One day, you guys go on a road trip. It's so overdone, it's pretty much in every chick-flick, but it feels completely new when Eric and you do it.

It's a rainy, miserable day and it makes sense two people like you guys wouldn't go on a road trip during a sunny, happy day when there might be a rainbow or too, a baby bird learning to fly, and he stole his sister's husband's sports car for the trip and it's such a dangerous feeling that your heart races the whole day, even when you're in bed and the lights are off and you can hear your Mom eating breakfast downstairs 'cause she's weird like that.

Her hair's flying in the wind and his laugh sounds real, not all choked and bitter like usual and it's a Kodak moment, really.

You should've been there.

(It's as if two caged birds were finally let go into the heavens, and they've discovered how to sing and dance and love and there's no complications about life, the only thing they have to do is _live._

She thinks that's how, if she ever had her own universe, it would be. There would be no science or no rules that she'd have to break and be yelled at because she doesn't believe them, doesn't follow them and she didn't feel the need to be so tough and mean.)

Carly discovers how horrible, even by Sam Puckett standards, her grades have gotten and sets up an "intervention". Carly, Freddie, Spencer, and Ms. Benson.

They all frown down at her, Carly has her hands on her hips, and it's like she's so dumb and stupid and careless (do you even care about anything?) and there so much smarter- she wishes she could be more like them.

It feels like this is always what her life comes down to, people looking down on her, glaring, because she's done something wrong, destroying something (maybe herself? and maybe her life won't really always come back to this because she's just a eighteen-year-old rebel. What does she know about life when it comes down to it, she wonders).

They lecture her about grades and college and her _future _and all she wants to do is run to Eric, and have him wrap his arms around her (and he never says "i love you back" but she's Sam Puckett, she doesn't care. Doesn't really love him, either.

She thinks.)

After a moment of silence, when Spencer asks what's her side of the story, what does she have to say, Carly demands to know who's this boy she's dating and why is he making her act this way.

(She yells she knew and they knew she was going to end up doing nothing, haven't you seen her Mom, he's my soul mate, I love him, Carly and Freddie are just going to leave me behind, I just can't- stop looking at me like that, Benson. I need some ham or something and-

-And then she's slamming the door behind her and the sound echos in the tiny apartment and they all know she's going to Eric and she slumps on the sidewalk in front of Bushwell Plaza, defeated and wishes they could've stayed little kids pretending they can fly and chasing each other on the playground.

But people are always dreaming of "simpler times". And in those "simpler times", they dreamed of "simpler times". People are always saying I remember "simpler times"-

And even those simpler times weren't so simple at the time. Even a five-year-old wishes for simpler times. Times were they already know their ABCs and are considered "big kids" and are tall enough to see over the counter and life just isn't fair is a conclusion she's come to a long time ago.)

He whispers to her in French, and clenches her hand tight those nights when she's so angry she can't breathe and he calms her down, he makes her float, he cracks her cocoon and lets her fly.

So that's why when he breaks up with her, saying all he's doing is bringing her down, she cries for days and doesn't go anywhere, not the Groovy Smoothie or school or Carly's house and she can feel her Mom coming in when she's almost asleep, her eyes closed, and kissing her on the forehead. (She wishes there was a picture of that moment, because she can't remember her mother ever being that loving and it warms her heart to think of her doing that.)

She's never been in love before - she might have thought it was love, but it wasn't. And in the future, she'll probably say the same about Eric. But she's Sam - the future's never been something she's pondered. Most of the time she just goes with the flow, letting go and enjoying the ride of life.

All that matters is the here and now and right now, her heart is broken.

Her grades get better and she graduates, just barely, and follows Carly to college and meets a few more boys and eventually falls for one so much that they get married a week after their first date in Las Vegas and she thinks by now her life is such a cliche she should have a movie - they get divorced a year later, and it would've been much sooner if not for the fact they were both incredibly lazy.

And no matter how old she gets, she can still see Eric's haunted eyes saying he's just bringing her down, and how she could see each and every bone, how the most she saw him eat was two pieces of chicken, and the tattoos and the scars, and she can hear is broken, bitter laugh, him whispering in French (she likes to think it was i love you) because no person should look or say the things he did.

He was tragic, meant for disaster.

And maybe she is too.

(&)

**A/N: so, um, what is this? i have no idea. i know a lot of people hate OCs, and i'm not to fond of 'em either, but sam at a party, getting totally out-of-control, and falling for this horribly tragic bad boy would not get out of my head. it's kind of inspired by another fic i wrote a while back, f l o w e r s, where sam dates a "bad boy" but it was a lot less dramatic and i don't even think he had a name.**

**um, if you liked this (which i doubt a lot of people will) review please? :) but it makes me happy just knowing someone has read my stories!**


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